by Ellen Riggs
I let Keats into the truck and rolled down the window. “Merle, you wouldn’t have Sarah and your granddaughter if you’d reconnected with Edna. She got the ring, you got the real jewels.”
When I got in and closed the door, and looked out, Merle was beaming. “I like you, young lady. You could stop a clock too, if you don’t mind an old man saying so.”
Laughing, I smoothed the bib of my overalls. “I’m pleased to hear it.”
“And take it from the same old man… don’t ever let pride get in the way of true love. You don’t want to end up my age with that kind of regret. It’s a heavy load to carry.”
I reached out and he squeezed my hand. “I wish I’d had a dad or granddad like you, Merle.”
Now he flushed again, and this time, I didn’t feel guilty at all.
Chapter Twenty
Jilly had completely unpacked the kitchen and was up to her elbows in flour as she kneaded bread dough for a homemade pizza night. She had rarely looked happier than she did in that moment, which may have had something to do with Asher’s plan to come and personalize his own pizza. I’d tipped her off to his topping combo: chopped dill pickle, pineapple and bacon. The man was going to be in heaven, particularly when he followed that zesty mouthful with blueberry buckle.
“You’re sure you won’t invite Kellan?” she asked. “It would be such fun.”
“It’s no fun if he’s lecturing me. I want to enjoy my pizza, not defend our successful black ops mission.”
“Well, he’s not wrong. It was reckless and could have gone far off the rails.”
I glared at her. “Whose side are you on?”
“The same side as my best friend, like always. Why do you think I was out there being reckless with you? You didn’t even need to twist my arm.”
“True.” I scooped up shredded cheese out of a big bowl and dropped it into my mouth. “Why does shredded cheese taste so much better than sliced?”
She slapped my hand away, dusting my sleeve with flour. “Some mysteries are better left unsolved.”
“I bet shredding unleashes the flavor molecules,” I said, trying to sneak around her and getting smacked with a spatula for my trouble.
“How about you just give your brain the night off and spend some quality time with your guests? You’ve barely been around the past few days.”
“Like they’d notice. All they do is play round after round and then sleep.”
She smiled. “They’ll probably be the lowest maintenance guests we’ll ever have. No one said a word of complaint about catered food. Tonight, I want to give them something they’ll remember.”
“No one will forget your homemade pizza. I’m quite sure of that.”
I showered again before dinner. Despite having a shower both last night and in the morning, I still smelled of swamp. Somehow that short wrestle in the shallows with Edna clung harder than my dump a few days earlier. The murky algae still growing along the pond’s edges wouldn’t die till the first real frost. I’d be there to witness that happen because someone had to feed Edna’s colony, at least until the Rescue Mafia could trap them and find enough shelters. It would be a long operation.
Meanwhile, Edna herself had been trapped and was in a shelter of Kellan’s choosing. He refused to say where and I didn’t particularly care, as long as she was safe.
When I came down for dinner, the usual calm that hung over the family room like a weighted blanket had disappeared. Gertrude and Morag were glaring at each other over their hands of cards and Annamae was fanning herself with her cards. She pulled out her embroidered handkerchief to have it at the ready.
“What’s going on, folks?” I asked. “Usually you could drop a pin in this room and hear it roll.”
Gertrude and Morag didn’t shift their gaze from each other or say a word, so I raised my eyebrows at Annamae.
“Morag thinks Gertrude peeked at her hand under cover of a cough,” Annamae said. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Oh, it’s true, and it’s not the first time, either,” Morag said. “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
Gertrude threw down her hand with a dramatic flourish. “There. Satisfied? I forfeit the game.”
“You forfeit because you were going to lose,” Morag said. “So no, I’m not satisfied.”
“That’s a little premature, isn’t it? Normally I kick your butt, Morag Tanner,” Gertrude said.
“Only because you have a better hired hand than I do.” Morag tossed a hostile glare at her paid partner, Kimberly.
“Don’t be rude to our support team,” Gertrude said. “If you’re oversensitive to losing, that’s your problem.”
“I’m oversensitive to cheaters,” Morag said. “That’s your problem.”
Joan and the hired hands eased their chairs back, but Annamae held her ground, albeit while patting her eyes.
I thought about diverting the conversation into safer channels but decided to let the argument run its course. Flaring tempers could go interesting places.
“Old grudges certainly die hard, don’t they?” Gertrude said. “This one’s been eating away at you for decades. Anger can kill you, Morag.”
“Well, it hasn’t yet and I’m nearly eighty. I thought guilt and shame might kill you by now, but no such luck.”
“Guilt and shame?” Gertrude’s voice thundered and she rose from the table. “Why should I be ashamed? I didn’t deliver an illegitimate child and put it up for adoption. I believe that was your daughter.”
“Who had an affair with your husband. That you knew about and hid. Which makes you a cheater too, in my view.”
Jilly came in from the kitchen just in time to see Gertrude sweep her cards right off the table. I signalled my friend to stay quiet as the cards fluttered to the hardwood floor.
“I made a choice to ignore my husband’s dalliances,” Gertrude said. “For the sake of family peace. I didn’t condone them, obviously. I just looked the other way. I was never certain he and your daughter kept company… until now. It’s unfortunate, but she was an adult, Morag. She made her own choices.”
“We were friends.” Now Morag did the thundering. She made an even more dramatic gesture to sweep off her cards, accidentally clipping Kimberly in the chin. “Friends don’t do that to each other.”
Gertrude crossed her arms. “Pish posh. We were never friends, any of us. We play bridge to keep an eye on each other. Your son forced my son out of business by spreading word he’d had a heart attack at thirty-seven. No one trusts an investment advisor who might pop off at any second.”
“It’s not my fault your son got bad genes from his heartless father.”
“There was no heart attack. He had a bowel fissure that he was too embarrassed to share publicly. Men and their stupid pride! He preferred to let your son’s slander ruin him.”
“Ladies, really,” Joan finally chimed in. “This is unseemly. You’ll shock our hosts.”
“What will shock our hosts is hearing about that stunt you pulled on your husband,” Gertrude said. “Locking him out of the bedroom and inviting his brother in. Didn’t he wonder about where the stork found your last child?”
“Stop it, all of you,” Annamae said, sobbing now. “We are friends and friends don’t behave like this.” She got up to leave the room. “Enemies don’t even behave like this.”
“Oh, run away like you always do, Annamae,” Gertrude called after her. “If you think we don’t know about your husband’s peccadilloes, you’re wrong. He passed along a little problem, didn’t he?”
Annamae gasped. “Edna told you!”
Gertrude gave a nasty little laugh. “She didn’t need to. Our husbands spent time in the same disreputable company.”
Morag circled the table and approached Gertrude. “Are you saying your husband exposed my daughter to something dangerous?”
She raised her hand, palm open, and I had no doubt she intended to slap the living daylights out of Gertrude.
“Ladies, that’
s enough,” I said. “My brother will be here any second and I’ll have you both arrested if there’s any violence on my property.”
Morag gave me a pleading glance. “Just one slap. I’ve wanted to do it for forty years.”
“Do it,” Gertrude said. “Then I’ll drag what’s left of your name through the Clover Grove gossip mill. We have plenty of witnesses.”
“Fine with me,” Morag said. “Because I’ve already let it leak you poisoned Edna.”
Gertrude gasped. “You didn’t!”
“I saw you in the kitchen looking at the crème brûlée,” Morag said. “You left in a hurry when I caught you.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Your word against mine,” Morag said. “One of us has a lying, philandering husband she’s been covering for all these years. You live a lie.”
“One of us has a grandchild she disowned,” Gertrude said. “So Edna had as much to hide about you as me. And it so happened that I also saw you examine the crème brûlée with interest. You were holding a syringe at the time.”
The women fell silent, staring at each other with such ferocity that none of us noticed we had a new audience. There was clacking on hardwood and a sudden clap that made everyone jump.
My mother stepped right in between the warring women and said, “Well, I got here just in time. A little bird told me some bridge players needed manicures, and I came prepared.”
She lifted a large black bag that no doubt held an entire spa. Iris was behind her, wide eyes confirming they’d heard much of the argument.
Asher came in with his usual bright smile. “How’s it going, folks?”
Gertrude and Morag both looked down at the same moment and Mom said, “Well, son, we’re having a spa night for the ladies, so you’d be better to spend your time in the kitchen.”
“Sounds good to me.” He directed the full force of his smile at Jilly, who was wringing her apron in the kitchen doorway.
“I’m heading out for some fresh air,” I said. “It’s time to turn the manure. If you wait too long, it explodes.”
Chapter Twenty-One
My nerves settled the second I walked into the barn. Simple, mindless chores were exactly what I needed to cleanse my soul from the mudslinging inside. I went out to unlock the gates to the sheep, goat and cow pastures and put Keats to work. He was able to open the gates himself at the right time if I left them unlatched, but still shut.
Back inside, I pulled out my phone to call Kellan. That’s when I noticed three sets of eyes looking down at me from the loft.
“I see you’re making yourselves right at home,” I told Panther, Fleecy and Big Red. “Can I get you anything? The cat kibble is over at Edna’s, but there’s tinned tuna in the pantry if you can hang on for a bit.”
At first there was no reaction, but one by one the cats came down to sit on a shelf and stare at me from close range. I put my phone on the shelf and my hands on my hips.
“Look, I don’t speak feline,” I said. “If you want to tell me something, you’re going to have to be more explicit.”
Big Red batted my phone off the shelf and before I could retrieve it, Panther jumped down and made a show of scraping loose hay over it with his front paw, as if covering excrement.
“That’s not very nice, considering I just offered you hospitality.”
Fleecy and Red jumped down too and they made a game of batting my phone around like a catnip mouse.
“Stop that.” I darted in to get it. “Do you have any idea how much these things cost?”
I slipped the phone into my front pocket just as Keats brought in the sheep. He did a double take when he saw the cats—three in a row, backs arched and hissing. To give him full credit, he stayed focused on the task at hand.
Once the sheep were locked up, however, he took a little run at the cats and scattered them. Big Red leapt right over the dog and swatted at Keats’ tail when he landed. He must have spared the claws or I’d have heard about it.
“Listen up, all of you,” I said. “I like fun and games as much as the next gal, but when it comes to my livestock, I’m all business. So you three… Out of the way until Keats gets everyone to bed. If you want to behave like fools after that, go to town.”
I wanted to believe the cats understood me because they jumped back on the shelf. But I think it had more to do with the prospect of more and bigger hooves coming their way. They weren’t stupid, that much was obvious.
After opening the door to the goat pen for Keats, I pulled my phone out again. That’s when all three cats started yowling in unison.
“Ah. Now I get it. You don’t want me chatting to the police chief.” I lowered the phone and the caterwauling stopped. “Right. But here’s the problem: the chief insists on hearing every little detail about everything and if I don’t share, I’m in big trouble. Believe it or not, he wants the best for Edna, as we all do.”
They looked at each other, and one by one, started licking their front paws. I took that as tacit permission to carry on, and when I pressed Kellan’s number, there was no further disruption.
When he picked up, I put him on speaker so that my hands were free to dish out the evening rations. “I’ve got one heck of a tale for you about the bridge club,” I told him. “But first, I want to know how Edna—”
The caterwauling began again instantly. It was hard to believe three small creatures could create such a racket.
“What on earth was that?” Kellan asked, when they took a breather.
“Three cats followed me home from the marsh,” I said. “They were sitting on the henhouse this morning, and now they’ve apparently moved into the barn.”
“How’s Keats taking that?” Kellan asked. “He didn’t look pleased about the feline situation last night.”
“Fur’s going to fly if they decide to stay. But they’ll need to work it out. I can’t turn away Edna’s—”
The caterwauling started again, like flicking on a light switch. This time I put two and two together. But first I had to test my theory. I waited for them to simmer down and said, “I might have to call you back when I’ve finished in the barn, Kellan. Because I have something really important to tell you about Ed—”
I didn’t even get both syllables out before the cats started their vocal gymnastics. This feline security team did not want me saying Edna’s name out loud. At least, not here.
“Got it,” I said, saluting them.
“Got what?” Kellan asked.
I didn’t want to tell him I was communing with cats now, so I just said, “Let’s chat later.”
“How about I come over there when I’m done in an hour?” he said.
“Sounds good. On the upside, it’s pizza night. On the downside, my mom’s here doing manicures on the guests.”
“Next idea,” he said. “How about I pick you up and we head over to Bone Appetit Bistro in Dorset Hills?”
“Sure!” I must have sounded too eager because Fleecy let out a rather grating meow. Keats had just delivered the goats and after I closed the door behind them, he tilted his head and shot me a rather sweet look with his brown eye.
“All right then,” Kellan said. “See you in just over an hour.”
After I hung up and double checked to make sure we were disconnected, I told my audience, “It’s not a date. The police chief just wants to hear my story without constant disruption.”
The phone buzzed with a text from Kellan: “Keats isn’t invited.”
It was a date.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jilly could hardly stay still long enough to run her flat iron through my hair. “Finally. I thought this day would never come.”
“I don’t know for sure it’s a date,” I said. The moment after his text, I’d begun to doubt. “We’re going to a restaurant, so it makes sense not to bring Keats.”
We were locked in Jilly’s en suite bathroom, which was so packed with makeover options that Keats had to sit in the shower stall and watch.
Jilly turned to him now and asked, “Is it a date, Keats?” The dog offered a sloppy smile and gave three quick pants: yes-yes-yes. “See? I trust his instincts more than yours.”
I gave a shrug of submission. “We were on speaker, so I suppose the dog’s opinion has merit. Just the same, I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard, Jilly. Imagine if it’s not a date? Then I’ll feel stupid, because Kellan knows I don’t fuss much with my hair.”
“He doesn’t know what you do with your hair when you go to restaurants, because you’ve never dined out since you got here.”
“Why would I when the best chef in town is under the same roof?”
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she said. “Even into my lucky cashmere sweater, which I was going to wear myself later.”
“Eww, no,” I said, as she held up a sky-blue cardigan. “That sweater is intended for my brother. I’ll take the next best option. Otherwise it’s my gray jacket from the Flordale days.”
Jilly was horrified. “You don’t want to look like a suit with Kellan,” she said, rifling through the pile of clothes she’d brought in.
“No buttons. Remember I popped Daisy’s blouse and exposed my sports bra. Whatever you choose has to be low risk.”
“You mean low cut,” she said, tossing me a scoopy sweater in a mossy green.
“Too much like swamp,” I said. “I have PTSD after last night.”
“Compliments your eyes,” she said. “And for pity’s sake, change out of the sports bra and overalls. Tonight you’re just regular Ivy, not farmer Ivy.”
I checked my fingernails and saw the usual crescents of dirt. “I don’t know regular Ivy anymore. She was last seen in college.”
“Just relax. Have a glass of wine and watch your breathing. It’s just Kellan, someone you already impressed long ago.”
“Maybe I should have a couple of shots of Edna’s vodka before we go.”
“Absolutely not.” She tipped my chin up and applied eyeliner with a steady hand.
